Labrang Monastery

This monastery, about 280km south to Lanzhou, was built in 1709. Iot is one of the six leading lamaseries of the Gelugpa School (the Yellow Sect) in China. As its scale is only next to the Potala Palace in Tibet, it is also known as the "Lesser Potala Palace".

The monastery which occupies 82 hectares has more than 10,000 rooms capable of accommodating over 3,000 lamas and six academic schools of the different sects of Lamaism. Tens of thousands of cultural relics and art treasures are stored in the monastery and over 60,000 volumes of Tibetan scriptures, classics and books have been collected.